The moves were agreed tonight by EU leaders, 12 days after Flight MH17 was shot down with the loss of 298 lives over an area of eastern Ukraine controlled by Russian-backed separatist fighters.
The United States announced sanctions against Russia’s energy, weapons and finance industries, as the West attempted a co-ordinated move to force President Putin to de-escalate the civil war in Ukraine.
President Barack Obama said the new sanctions would make Russia’s “weak economy even weaker”. He added: “Russia is once again isolating itself from the international community, setting back decades of genuine progress. It does not have to be this way. This is a choice Russia and President Putin has made.
“If Russia continues on this current path, the costs on Russia will continue to grow,” Mr Obama said.
EU chiefs signalled they are ready to take further steps to hit the Russian economy if it continued to destabilise Ukraine. And they condemned the failure of separatist forces to give unfettered access to air accident investigators to the MH17 disaster site.
